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Re: PDF Links are not in blue

The original poster has solved the original problem, but the discussion
continues. <g>

>> The cross reference links in my PDF are not
>> appearing in blue. What are
>> the printer settings I need to make for this?
>
> You need to make sure you are using a color postscript
> driver, and that it's set to print color and not
> monochrome. But, links have to be in color in your
> source document.

Sounds like that was the culprit. I missed that possibility in my reply to the
original post.

>> Adobe, if you're reading this: Why not include "Blue
>> underlined text" as an
>> option when creating links? "Visible Rectangle"
>> doesn't match people's idea of
>> what a link looks like, and it's ugly to boot. Every
>> time I start creating links
>> in a new PDF, I have to turn off the visible
>> rectangle. <grouse grouse>
>
> Acrobat has to use rectangular coordinates for
> hypertext regions. Acrobat does not go in and edit
> text when creating output. It takes what you give it,
> "prints" the pages to PDF (well, Distiller does), and
> creates the happy fun extras afterward. You are not
> converting from one format to another, such as an HTML
> conversion, rather you are rendering pre-fab content
> as-is and are complimenting it with hypertext
> capability.

Yes, all true. But using rectangular coordinates does not necessarily mean that
Acrobat must display all four coordinates (i.e., a box) or none at all (i.e.,
the invisible rectangle option). What Acrobat stores as internal information and
what the user sees are two different things.

Acrobat does not edit text. But obviously it's capable of detecting font, color,
and a few other text attributes. When I draw the "invisible box" to create a
hyperlink, I see no reason Acrobat shouldn't be able to discern that there's
text there and then change it to blue/underlined/whatever.

> For the distiller engine (or the hypertext tool in
> acrobat) to be able to render the hypertext as another
> color and with other attributes:
>
> (list of several requirements snipped)
>
> I'm sure I'm missing a few things. But, this would
> greatly increase distilling time.

Processors are pretty fast these days. If it takes 2 minutes instead of 1 minute
to distill, I can live with that. (Actually, if Acrobat would just give me a
blue underlined option when I *manually* create links in Acrobat, I'd be
pleased. Having that function built into Distiller would be icing on the cake,
but I do my links manually. For various reasons, the PDFMaker add-in isn't
available where I work. Having your copy of Word on a network drive seems to
throw that whole thing for a loop, and since our PDF docs are currently short, I
haven't looked too hard for a workaround. I print to .PRN using the correct
Distiller drivers, distill, and then add in the hyperlinks by hand.)

You know something... it doesn't have to be blue/underlined, as far as I'm
concerned; I can do that in Word. What I really really want is to NOT have to go
in and change the default from "visible rectangle/invert to highlight" to
"invisible rectangle/no highlight" every single time I start putting links into
a PDF. It's just an annoyance. If I could just change it once and for all in a
Preferences dialog somewhere, that would be peachy.

> As for changing the properties of the rectangle, you
> can do this in your distiller job options.

Boy, am I happy to hear that. I've looked and looked and looked. If you could
tell me *where* in the Distiller job options I can do this, I'd be indebted.
(Maybe you're referring to PDFMaker? In which case never mind -- see above.)

I stand by my grousing.

Christine

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